Martín-Lunas

The observant viewer will not miss the black dots that run through these images. Delineated on the surfaces of many slides in the  J.R. Plaza Archive, they are there for a reason: to cover up a face, and the same face always. Who is this man who appears here decapitated? Who, what is more, could have bothered to exclude him so precisely from this collection of more than 800 slides?

The portrait of a person isn’t just a representation or the graphic memory of a moment that has occurred in time. Neither is it merely a metaphor or a path along which to construct or enact a mythical narrative. It is also a center of symbolic forces that, in certain cases, can conjure a wrong or serve as an instrument of torture. The black dots have a precise function here: to wipe out Antonio Martín-Lunas, Plaza’s best friend and the main character in what in Mexico came to be known as “the exile scandal”, a sexual affair involving two of Plaza’s sisters, to his disgrace and dishonour. The black stains are thus both an abyss on the surface and a super-presence, turning Martín-Lunas, the man who has committed treachery and must expiate his guilt by being present in all his absence, into the unequivocal centre of gravity of the images.

For Bonillas it was clear what had to be done with these images: bring them to light and turn them into an altarpiece to the contradiction that lies on the images themselves. All of the photographs were taken in apparently fraternal times, and yet they are scarred all the way through by catastrophe. A retrospective gaze brings together the time of the photograph and the time of the Martín-Lunas disloyalty, making it seem that the friends that gather around Martín-Lunas are smiling as if they were conscious of their good luck in having each other’s company, the antidote to a solitary existence. The victim is also there, dominant, with an eloquent grace, not suspecting what will befall him in the future.